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WiFi service providers should co-operate not compete, says Broadreach Networks chief
In an interview with The Register, Magnus McEwen-King of UK WiFi access provider Broadreach Networks is keen that WiFi service providers, sometimes known as WISP’s, should work together to ensure consumers can use any of the services, not just be locked into a single service.
Nokia buy Sega’s Mobile gaming unit
It is a widely known fact that without enough compelling content, a platform will wither and eventually die. Sega know this to their cost – they lost the Dreamcast this way and it’s clear that Nokia understand this too. They are also both big believers in multi-player mobile gaming.
Nokia and Sega have been working together since November 2002, putting Sega content on to the Nokia N-Gage (mobile-gaming-platform-that-happens-to-be-a-phone). It’s clearly been a successful relationship as Nokia have announced that it will buy Sega Mobile business and integrating it into theirs.
Sega have a long history in multi-player gaming. It’s a little discussed fact that Sega’s last games console, the Dreamcast, which was its Japanese released in late 1998, shipped with dialup modem enabling owners to connect to SegaNet. SegaNet provided walled garden Web browsing and importantly enabled people to play games against others around the world. Sega were clearly well ahead of the rest of the console companies – there was even a broadband Ethernet connection available in Japan and the USA.
Following their exit from the hardware gaming business, they have used their undisputed skills in writing games and providing them for other gaming platforms. One of the areas they focused on was mobile gaming.
Understanding that they needed to provide a end-to-end solutions for multi-platform mobile gaming, Sega created the SEGA Network Applications Package, generally called SNAP. Providing both a toolkit that enabled games developers to make their titles network enabled and server hosting, billing, consulting, & QA services they have been successful in attracting users.
It’s this complete development solution that Nokia has bought. SNAP will bring immediate benefits to the Nokia N-Gage game deck and is scheduled to be available to consumers worldwide on 7 October 2003.
SNAP is used on a number of mobile platforms including Palm and other mobile phone manufacturers hardware. It’s not clear is the Nokia purchase will impact of the breadth of platforms supported, or is the manufacturers will be keen to support a software platform that Nokia owns.
Links – Nokia PR; SNAP; Sega Mobile games
“Is 99c too much for online music?” poll shows interesting splits
A recent Billboard poll of just over 9,000 votes has just released its results. When asked if they thought that 99c was too much to pay for a single music track, there responses were –
32% – 99c too much
29% – why pay when I can download for free?
22% – OK if the quality and selection of the tracks is good
17% – fair amount, “based on what you have to pay for an album.”
There are a couple of few ways at looking at this.
- There’s a rough three way split between the price being OK (39%), people wanting it for free (29%) and the price is too high (32%).
- 61% are not being happy to pay 99c because either it’s viewed as too much or they have no intention of paying for it no matter how cheap it is and 39% (22% + 17%) thinking that the cost is reasonable.
- Of those prepared to pay for music online, more are willing to the pay the 99c price – 39% vs 32%.
It’s important to remember that this poll isn’t fully representative of the general public as it was taken online, therefore is biased toward people who are already online, are enthused enough to fill out a poll and visit the Billboard site.
Time will tell if UK customer will be prepared to pay more more than 99c per track when the Link
UK Film Council and government setup anti-piracy task-force
An anti-piracy task-force is being setup by the UK Film Council and government. With the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) estimating the cost of counterfeiting to the UK’s domestic film industry at around £400m, the task-force will focus on getting accurate figures for the size of the problem and suggestions of how it can be tackled.
The new task-force, which will be chaired by UK Film Council board member Nigel Green, includes representatives of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, UK film producers, distributors, exhibitors, visual effects companies and major US studios, film sales agents, as well as actors’ union Equity.
Copy VHS tapes are still the major problem, with around one in three videos purchased in the UK believed to be an unauthorised copies. FACT say the numbers of pirate DVDs are also expanding rapidly citing a number of 100,000 DVD raids having been carried out already this year. The majority of the DVD originate in the Far East.
Links – UK Film Council, FACT
DI Music – multilayered music format
An interesting new electronic music format is being spoken about as an advance on MP3. DI Music, as it’s being labelled, enables the listener to select the sections of the tracks that are played back in real time – effectively live remixing on playback.
Tracks need to be specifically prepared for this format using software from digimpro and when mixing the track, the recording artist is able include multiple versions of sections of the track eg. different drum tracks could be included. This will obviously take a lot of extra thought and consideration in preparing tracks for release.
We feel this is a very interesting idea as to what may be possible with many different medias, but with no demonstration publicly available to date, it’s hard to judge whether this is something that consumers will be interested in taking advantage of. While a hardcore of music enthusiasts are bound to be interested in this, we suspect that most listeners will find it hard to grab the concept and perhaps even fewer will be interested enough to be actively involved in mixing the tracks they are listening to.
ATi to supply graphics chip for Xbox 2
After a long period of speculation and rurmors Microsoft has confirmed that it is to change the supplier for it graphics subsystem on the Xbox 2 to ATi. Nvidia supplies the chip set for the current Xbox.
The base cost of the Xbox has been something of a concern to Microsoft and they have been keen to drive the price down to reduce the amount of money they lose on each one. Many in the industry feel that Microsoft wanted Nvidia to drop their previously agreed unit price for the current Xbox graphics chips and Nvidia declined. Nvidia recently reported a hike in profits that they attributed to the Xbox deal.
The official Microsoft quote was, “We’re combining Microsoft’s vision, software experience and R&D resources with ATI’s pioneering leadership in graphics technologies to create innovative future Xbox products and services that meet the lifestyle needs of consumers in the Digital Decade,” said Robbie Bach, senior vice president of the Home and Entertainment Division at Microsoft. “We selected ATI after reviewing the top graphics technologies in development and determining that ATI’s technical vision fits perfectly with the future direction of Xbox.”
Microsoft to launch European single music track download service
Microsoft will be partnering with On Demand Distribution (OD2) to launch a European rival to the US-only Apple iTunes service. OD2 currently has 200,000 tracks available from five major record companies, which they hope to expand to 300,000 in the next few weeks.The proposed pricing of single tracks is 75 pence (Euro 1.06, $1.21) with albums being £7.99 (Euro 11.37, $12.86). The Apple service pound equivalent is about 62p and £6.20.The higher pricing of the proposed UK service will re-ignite the debate over the pricing of electronically delivered good compared with their physical CD equivalent. The argument from those that say the download versions are priced to highly is that these aren’t physical good that need to be manufactured, packaged, shipped and justify their place on a retailers shelf – they’re electrons, that once encoded take up a tiny amount of low cost disk space and then have a low cost of distribution. The companies justify the prices saying they have large investments in server hardware. As more providers enter the market, competition lowers prices – in the US, rival pay-and-download services have started dropping their prices, with some offering tracks at 79 cents.It’s widely acknowledged that the Apple iTunes service has been a great success. The problem for the world at-large is that currently it only runs on Apple hardware, which only accounts for around 5% of all computers, and it is currently only available in the USA. Among the reasons that the Apple service has been embraced so heartily, is that is it fantastically easy to use, it recommends related music to you and the licensing terms gives the purchaser a lot of freedom to move their purchased music to different computers and portable music players. Details have yet to emerge as to what the Microsoft/OD2 offering will be like.
Review of the Linksys WMA11B Wireless-B Media Adapter
Tom Hardware reviews the Linksys WMA11B Wireless-B Media Adapter.
In the same vain as other Digital Media Adaptors based on the Intel reference design, this VHS cassette-sized unit connects to a TV set, Using the supplied remote control it allows the browsing and playback of photo’s, music and video, that are held on your networked Windows PC, to be enjoyed through your TV screen. Interestingly, the serving machine has to be running Windows XP but can be connected either via cabling or using 802.11b, WiFi connection.
It’s essentially the same functionalisty as Sony’s Roomlink, but has the advatage that you don’t need to buy a Sony Vaio PC to serve the content from. To date, Sony won’t sell the serving software seperatley.
It’s works with the mainstreem formats of media, but there’s no mention of the Ogg Vobis, which is growing in popularity with computer audiofiles.
Their view of the product is that it’s a good first stab. Street price should be around $149.
DivX.com becomes first US retailer for KiSS DP-500 DVD player
KiSS was the first licensee of the DivX codec for use in a DVD player, now DivX.com will be the first retail channel for the DP-500 at a price of $299.
In addition to supporting DivX 3.xx, 4.xx and 5.xx.video technology, the DP-500 offers a number of cutting edge features including progressive scan, Ethernet 10/100, Internet radio streaming, PC-Link, support for DVD, SVCD, VCD, CD, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, CD-RW & DVD-RW/+RW playback, and a photo album feature that enables users to view digital photos on a television.